


No One Told Me

by buckybarnes (ineffablystyles)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Assistant Darcy Lewis, Awesome Darcy Lewis, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes and the 21st Century, Clint Barton & Darcy Lewis Friendship, Darcy Lewis & Tony Stark Friendship, Darcy Lewis Is a Good Bro, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Meet-Cute, Protective Bucky Barnes, Scientist Wrangler Darcy Lewis, Steve Rogers is a little shit, Swearing, WinterShock - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-05 20:52:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18836569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineffablystyles/pseuds/buckybarnes
Summary: All Darcy Lewis had wanted was to just get her six credit points and finally graduate with her Political Science major.No one had told her she'd somehow end up in New Mexico following around an astrophysicist who didn't give a fuck that the rest of the world thought she was nuts, and that she'd taze the Norse God of Thunder as a result. No one had told her she'd promptly be named his 'Lightning Sister', or that her iPod would be stolen by The iPod Thief and his Robin Hood friend. Most of all, no one had told her that she'd move to New York and meet Tony Stark and his Merry Group of Friends (read: The Avengers).Maybe if someone had told her, she wouldn't have said yes to the internship, dropped out of her useless degree and become a PA instead. Maybe she wouldn't have been running around Stark Tower playing Nerf Tag with Hawkeye. Maybe she'd have actually googled who Bucky Barnes was - maybe.But no one had told her. And now here she was. Pushed up against a wall after shooting The Winter Soldier with a foam dart. God dammit.ORThe one where Darcy meets The Winter Soldier and finds out that Bucky Barnes isn't a puppy.





	1. pay attention in american history

**Author's Note:**

> So far it looks like this is only going to be 3 chapters...but I have a way of letting things get away from me and end up with 50k instead of 15k words. So. Yeah. We'll see how things go. 
> 
> Let me know what you think!!!

The Winter Soldier they called him, not that Darcy had any idea  _ who  _ that was until she’d googled him - which, ok, after reading about him she  _ really  _ should have already known since Steve never really stopped yapping on about him. Though, in her defence, he never specifically called him  _ The Winter Soldier _ . It was always ‘Bucky this’ and ‘Bucky that’ and Darcy was confident enough in herself to admit that for the longest time she’d thought he was talking about a puppy he’d had back in the 40s and decided a pet dog wasn’t worth looking into. 

She might have, eventually. If she finally managed to bring herself to listen to some of the stories Steve would blab on about and realise that Bucky wasn’t a  _ puppy  _ but a  _ person _ .

(She really should have paid more attention to her American History professor in high school.)

But then she’d gone and started some nerf war with Barton before she had the chance to rub some brain cells together. And she  _ knew  _ it was dumb and  _ stupid _ and that she was going to lose since he was the greatest marksman in the world, but Darcy was nothing if not determined. So by the time she finally realised that  _ Bucky  _ was a person and that he was Steve’s best friend from ‘back in the days’, well, it was too late for google to save her because she’d just accidentally shot him with a nerf gun... and then proceeded to make matters worse by running straight into him - because apparently Darcy was trying to claim the title of Dumbest Smart Person In The World.

“Shit,” she curses, right before she’s shoved up against the wall, a firm forearm resting against her throat for a solid thirty seconds before Steve and Sam manage to pull him away from her. She rubs at her neck, more out of instinct than pain. He hadn’t really been hurting her, not yet anyway. “Who’s the homeless guy?” she asks, tilting her head and focusing her gaze on Steve for an answer. He shoots her a pained look that tells her she should apparently already know this.

“Seriously?” Sam raises an eyebrow, more exasperated than Darcy has ever seen him - which is impressive, the guy always looked exasperated.

“What?” she demands, hands on her hips in the way Nat had taught her. She doesn’t think it gives off the same power as Black Widow, no matter how much she wills it to.

They couldn't seriously expect her to know what everyone who came and went around here looked like. Although, she sneaks another glance at the homeless person, the long unkempt hair and dangerously attractive scowl on his face really shouldn't have been something she'd forget - if she'd seen him before, which she doesn't think she has. “Correction: who’s the  _ hot  _ homeless person?” she grins as Steve’s frown deepens.

“This is Bucky," he sighs.

This time it was Darcy’s turn to frown, hands dropping from her hips. “Wait, Bucky’s a person?” is the first thing that comes past her lips before she could bite back the question.

Steve’s pained expression only seems to worsen at that and the homeless person -  _ Bucky,  _ she corrects herself - twitches a little like he was suddenly interested in the conversation. Which is sort of a relief since Darcy was starting to think that maybe something was wrong with him because of how still he was standing. “What do you mean?” Steve asks in that ‘Captain America Is Disappointed In You’ voice he only ever uses on her.

Except, as her eyes slant back to Bucky and the way he bristles a little, before the barely discernible parts of his face turn down into a frown, she thinks maybe she’s not the only one who’s been on the end of that voice before.

“I just…” she trails off, glancing back at Steve. “I thought Bucky was your  _ puppy,”  _ she explains. “You know, back in the forties,” she waves her hand around, as though that would explain everything.

“A puppy that took girls to dances with me?” he quirks a brow, a little bit of amusement filtering into his expression.

“Hey, I don’t judge. I just assumed that was how you met girls,” she shrugs.

“I told you about how I went to live with him,” he says, growing more and more agitated.

“You can’t expect me to listen to  _ everything  _ you say, do you?” she tries to defend herself.

“You _made me_ _talk to you_ when you first got here. Went on a whole spiel about how it was basically your _job,_ ” Steve emphasises.

“Well, you talk a lot,” she could have sworn she heard a small snort pass through Bucky’s lips at that. “And I’m always just off Jane or Science Bender hours when you drone on about the good old days,” she glances over at Bucky’s left arm as she says this, wondering how exactly it works. The inner mechanic that used to help her dad put cars - and just about everything else - together itches to pull it apart.

Steve wants to say something else, she knows he does with the way he purses his lips and glances towards Bucky before letting out a sigh. “I expect this kind of behaviour from Barton,” he says instead, his Captain America voice back again. “But you? Really? You're meant to be a scientist. You're meant to be smarter about these things,” his eyes flicker towards Bucky again and Darcy knows Bucky sees it with the way his body tenses up while Steve rubs tiredly at his face.

She tries to feel sorry for him, and she manages it for a couple of seconds, she really does. But then she remembers the envelope filled with glitter he’d sent her last week and instead all she does is shrug, “it’s my day off.”

“Come on, Rogers,” Sam tugs at his arm before he can say anything else, nudging him in the direction where all the science labs were kept.

“Where are you guys heading?” she asks, frowning a little.

“To get Bucky settled,” Steve replies evasively, which only serves to annoy Darcy.

“Where?” but no response comes, and instead she finds them all resolutely avoiding her gaze. “Fine, don't tell me. I'll find out eventually,” she promises. “Not even Tony can hide things from me.”

Sam snorts in agreement before they tuck tail and continue on down the hall. She considers following after them but she knows she wouldn't get very far. Even if Steve  _ wasn't _ a super soldier and Sam  _ wasn't  _ a stealthy war vet, Darcy wasn't really a quiet person so to speak.

She's completely forgotten about Barton at this stage, which is why when he jumps down from the rafters above her and shoots her with a foam dart she screams out loud and jumps a little too high. “Dammit, Clint,” she glares at him.

“I win,” he grins with a shrug. “Wanna make a bet about how long it'll take for The Winter Soldier to come out and play?”

“No,” Darcy scowls at him. “That's mean and Steve will kill us when he finds out, because he will find out. Go bug Tony about it,” she pauses. “If he hasn't already started his own wager, that is,” she corrects herself.

Barton’s off within a couple of seconds, demanding JARVIS tell him where exactly Tony was (‘working on the Iron Man suit in his lab, sir’). She rolls her eyes, heading towards her own room in the Tower to do some much needed - and arguably far too late - googling.

-

The Winter Soldier. Darcy hadn’t understood the name at first - but then again, she’d thought he was a homeless person when she’d first seen him - so that wasn’t really saying much.

Scrolling through google - and little bits of information that she’d hacked her way into - however, was giving her a better idea on the whole matter.

She knows the name was developed partly because he’d fallen off a train in the mountains of Russia into never ending snow, and partly because he’d been  _ frozen in ice  _ on and off for seventy-five years, but Darcy sees it differently.

She keeps finding her eyes trailing off towards his metal arm in the videos and pictures - of which there are  _ thousands  _ \- on the internet and she can’t stop the fascination building within her.

_ He’s definitely The Winter Soldier, _ she thinks to herself, watching as he brings his arm up and blocks a barrage of bullets that were heading his way. Though her attention isn’t on the bullets bouncing away from him, but on the way the sun hits the metal, spots of white glittering a little as though they were snowflakes. And Darcy thinks she can another reason why he’s known as The Winter Soldier, what with his long hair and metal arm and eyes as empty and cold as a city street in the middle of a snowstorm.

He also kinda reminds her of Snow White - except she doesn’t think true loves kiss will fix him this time. Although? Steve did talk about Bucky quite a bit and he was very secretive about how he’d talked Bucky into coming back - she’d hacked into the communication server and read back through the coms between him and Sam - and he never did go on any real dates...she snorted a little at the idea, she’d caught him staring at her chest more than a couple of times.

Still, it’ll be fun to tease him.

She turns back to the information pileup in front of her and presses play on the next video she’d come across. It was one of him on the bridge and she thinks that maybe she sees a second of recognition flicker in his eyes when he looks at Steve, and he’s suddenly not as cold as he was before. And if she hadn’t been interested in Bucky Barnes before, she certainly was now.

She doesn’t know how long she spent combing her way through various videos of Bucky - it seemed the internet was littered with them if you knew what to search (or hack, in her case), from scenes of him fighting a bunch of Hydra agents, to innocent shots of him picking out some plums from a street corner fruit stall. But she knows it’s been awhile when JARVIS interrupts her long overdue research to call her into a meeting.

Darcy knows it’s about Bucky because she’s usually never  _ invited _ to these sorts of things - what with not being a super person - unless there’s some sort of huge change that will affect everyone in the building. That includes her now since Tony had basically insisted she move in after the whole Ultron Ultimatum. And the Mexican Mess. And the Dark Elves Fiasco. And The New York Meltdown... basically just after a lot of Bad Shit… and she’d eventually caved. Free rent? Yes please.

But right now, the only significant change she could think of was that Steve’s best friend who’d died back in the forties, hadn’t actually died and was in fact back after being brainwashed into trying to kill him (and anyone who got in the way).

_ He’s probably suffering from some major PTSD,  _ Darcy thinks to herself as she waits for the lift to take her down to the meeting room.  

She wonders briefly if Bucky will be there when she arrives, but she immediately snorts at the idea. If there's one thing she knows about Steve it's that he's very particular about how things are done, and she has this strange sensation that he's not really ready to  _ share _ Bucky with anyone yet.

Darcy doesn't really blame him. She doesn't know what she'd do if she'd been separated from Janie for seventy five years and then found out she was  _ alive but tortured  _ the entire time.

And she's only really known her for a couple of years now - ever since Thor decided he'd drop down to earth...with his brother causing major havoc that she’d  _ somehow  _ ended up in the middle of. (All she’d wanted was to get those damn science credits and maybe visit New Mexico, but noooo - at least she’d met Janie).

She can already hear everyone arguing when she's halfway down the hall, and rolls her eyes. She assumes from the random exclamations and angry huffing that not everyone had taken the news of Bucky’s arrival well.

She pauses before the door wondering whether she should knock or just enter when it's swung open for her. Darcy’s eyes widen in surprise and she's almost run over by a worried Clint - which is not a good sign, she decides.

“Oh, good,” he says. “I was just about to come looking for you,” he tries to force a smile as he moves aside to let her in.

“That bad?” Darcy raises a brow as she follows him into the room.

“You've no idea,” he lets out a breath, dropping down into a seat and pulling her down into the one beside him. “I almost want to turn my hearing aids off so I don’t have to deal with Mum and Dad fighting,” he tells her referring to Steve and Tony.

Tony is sitting towards her right and with one glance at him she knows that he's not happy.

“Uh,” she looks over at Steve. “Is everything alright?” she asks nervously.

“No,” Tony cuts her a side glance, eyes all fire. But, because she's spent so much time with him ever since he’d forced her to move into the tower, she was able to see the panic and pain behind his eyes. She looks away from him and over to Steve who seems to be having the same reaction.

Darcy lets out a sigh, the only conclusion she can come to is that Tony is Not Happy about Bucky. “What's wrong?” she asks in her best Talk To Me Like Adults Or Else voice. So much for a day off.

“He can't stay here,” is all Tony will say.

“Where else is he meant to go?” Steve demands back fiercely, and from everyone else's reactions she knows this isn't the first time they've had this conversation today.

Clint drops his head onto the table while Sam pulls out his phone - probably trying to look up some of the notes he's been given on how to deal with stubborn war vets, and Natasha just stares neutrally between the two, leaving Darcy to try and diffuse the situation. It was probably why she'd been called in the first place, now that she thinks about it.

As unqualified as she was, somehow everyone seemed to listen to her. They’d all started gravitating around her within weeks of her arrival, and somehow she’d become the official unofficial fixer of all things Avengers.

She wishes Jane and Thor were here instead of doing who knows what on Asgard, they’d at least be able to help her. Or Wanda and Vision, though she guesses that teaching Wanda to control her powers would be more important than sorting out an argument between two friends. Bruce was who knows where, but she thinks that’s probably for the best given the situation, and everyone else had day jobs they had to be at - or school in Peter’s case.

“He should be in prison,” Tony hisses angrily, bringing her attention back to the problem at hand. “After everything he’s-”

“It wasn't him!” Steve slams his hands on the table, making her jump. She doesn't think she's ever seen him so worked up before.

“Alright, can we start from the beginning?” she asks as calmly as she can, there were parts of the story she was missing, she was sure of it.

The two men turn to look at her simultaneously and it kind of scares her how similar they are to one another.

“He killed my parents,” Tony says in explanation, the fight suddenly disappearing from his body as his shoulders slump and the angry mask on his face gives way to torment. She notices Steve flinch in response from the corner of her eyes. “I didn't even get to say goodbye,” Tony murmurs just loud enough for her to hear.

Well.

She hadn’t been expecting that. Maybe she should have dug a little deeper in her hacking - uh, googling - earlier.

“And you blame Bucky?” she asks carefully, looking for confirmation that that was what they were speaking about.

“He killed them,” Tony nods, while Steve sits in silence, biting his lip to keep from saying anything he might regret.

“Bucky killed them or The Winter Soldier did?” she asks, wording her question purposefully. She’d spent enough time with a shrink after Mexico and the Dark Elves, and everything in between, to have picked up a few tricks.

“Does it matter?” Tony shot back sharply. “They’re the same person.”

“Are they though?” Darcy asks softly. “He wasn’t in control of himself at the time. According to all the files online, he was being used, tortured into complying.”

“But it doesn’t make it ok,” Tony insists.

Darcy nods back in agreement. “No, it doesn’t,” she pauses, glancing around the room in contemplation and wondering if she would be overstepping with her next statement. But she ploughs through anyway.

“Technically you’ve all done things that aren’t ‘okay’. You and Bruce accidentally made a robot that went all murder-y,” she says to Tony. “You broke about a hundred different laws and put people in danger while trying to protect them,” she says to Steve. “The two of you are super assassins and I think that speaks for itself,” she nods to Clint and Nat. “Bruce turns into the fucking Hulk when he’s angry and practically tore apart a country the last time you took him out. My point is,” she says. “You’ve all done some pretty stupid shit and gotten a lot of people hurt as a result - there’s no sugar coating that, or pretending it didn’t happen. It’s a fact and there’s hundreds of videos online of you guys almost destroying the world while trying to save it.”

“But -”

“And I get it,” she ignores Clint’s attempt of interrupting. “They were your  _ parents  _ and it still hurts, but Tony, you can’t blame Bucky for it. You can’t say he deserves to be locked up for following orders after having his goddamn brain thrown in the blender for seventy five years. I get it when you say you don’t want him here, I do, but where else is he supposed to go?”

“We should also consider what will happen if we set him loose. The world is filled with easy triggers,” Natasha adds - whether helpfully or unhelpfully Darcy wasn’t too sure, but she ran with it anyway.

“If he’s here at least you lot can keep an eye on him and keep him in check, but out there...well,” she shrugs. “Don’t you want a clear conscious?” She asks them all sweetly.

“My conscious is never clear,” Tony mutters, though Darcy can see the iciness in his posture melting away as he took her words in.

“No one’s ever is,” she shrugs, squeezing his leg under the table as a show of solidarity. She makes a mental note to bully him into seeing a shrink again later.

“He stays locked up,” Tony gives in. “And he’s not to be let out until a full evaluation is completed and we’re all completely sure that he’s no longer A Murderbot. Or until I say so,” he shrugs and Darcy knows that that’s the best possible outcome they were going to get.

“Where are you going to keep him?” she asks a little too casually.

“Nice try, Darce,” Steve cracks a little smile. “But that’s classified.”

“Sorry, Shortcake,” Tony agrees, shooting Steve a quick but unmistakable nod - she watches as Steve’s shoulders relax that little bit more. “Need to know only. It’s for your own safety.”

“Boo,” she pouts, crossing her arms across her chest and watching as every male’s eyes flick down quickly before shooting back up to her face again. Including Steve’s. She smirks to herself, yeah, probably no True Love’s Kiss for Bucky. “I’ll find out the hard way, I guess.”

Sam snorts from across the table. “Don’t think any of us are doubting that, Darcy.”

“Wanna start a pool on how long it’ll take me?” She grins wickedly, wagging her eyebrows suggestively.

“I’m not a betting man, but if I were, it wouldn’t be against you,” Sam quips back with his own grin.

“I can't wait to meet him, I have  _ loads  _ of questions for him when he’s no longer all hobo-like and his brain is less mush-like,” she claps her hands together excitedly. “Do you think it’ll be long?”

“I’m not sure I want you spending time with him,” Steve mutters. 

“Why? I’ll be perfectly safe, you guys are the Avengers!” 

Steve only frowns back at her. “Believe it or not I’m more worried about him than I am you?” he poses it as a question, probably trying not to offend her. But it only serves to make Darcy preen at the not really a compliment-compliment.

“Oh, we believe it,” Tony snorts, but his words aren’t spoken maliciously and he continues it with, “I’m still not convinced there was only friendship between the two of you.”

“That’s what I said!” Darcy nods furiously.

“JARVIS look into that for me.” 

“Right away, sir,” JARVIS responds robotically.

-

It's Monday afternoon when Darcy finally decides to visit Bucky.

She’d hacked into the SI database the day after Bucky had arrived and found out immediately where he was staying. And ever since she's been telling herself that he needed time to adjust before she sprung herself on him, but that was only half of the reason why she’s waited two days to see him.

After the meeting they'd had on Friday, Steve had basically cornered her on her way to the lab to explain a few things - ‘since you thought Bucky was a puppy this entire time,’ he’d said, disbelieving expression still all over his face. And really, Darcy has felt a small bubble of anxiety growing in her chest ever since.

It isn't that she’s scared of Bucky or worried about her own safety - Darcy doesn't seem to have much of a fight or flight reflex, which is somewhat worrying.

She’s anxious because, well, she’s a mother hen and she really wants to help him but she's not too sure how successful she's going to be. And after everything Steve had explained to her, she doesn't want to make things any worse.

But, she knows that at this point she has no real impulse control and it was really only a matter of time before she snuck into the cordoned off area of Stark Tower.

Besides, she’s an all or nothing kind of girl and she’s already decided that Bucky will be one of Her People, and something tells her that he probably wouldn't appreciate people coddling him - or, this Bucky wouldn't. She's not too sure how 1940s Bucky would've felt about it, but from what Steve has told her, she thinks maybe he'd have savoured the attention.

She wonders if she could hack her way into slipping her name into the database to allow her access through her Stark Industries ID card but thinks this might be a good time to try some of the tricks Clint had been teaching her. 

She regretted it almost instantly.

Crawling through vents was not as fun as Clint made it out to be and Darcy instantly decides that she’s never doing this again; not willingly anyway. At least she had the foresight to wear leggings instead of a skirt.

She doesn’t have to crawl very far - thank god - but it takes her longer than she’d like to pull aside one of the panels and slip out of the way too tight space. She doesn’t know how Clint does this every day.  

By the time she manages to find her feet back on solid ground, Bucky is already watching her closely.

She blinks back at him owlishly before slipping her eyes off him and looking around the space that seems way too small for someone his size - which is ironic considering the cage was built to hold the Hulk.

She frowns at the lack of space and furniture.

She’d wondered what kind of changes Tony had made to the place to make it more livable, but she frowns at how little work has actually been done.

She can see there's a bed and a bathroom and a tiny desk in the corner, but she thinks there should probably be more for it to be less prison-like and more comfortable.

“Miss Lewis, you don’t have access to this area,” JARVIS spoke, startling her from her musings.

“Keep this between us please, JARVIS?” she shoots the computer a sweet smile, fluttering her eyelashes up at him. She’s not too sure how intelligent Tony has made his toys, but she’s found that JARVIS likes her well enough to keep her secrets most of the time - even when he sometimes didn’t approve.

“Mr Stark thought you’d try and sneak down here, so he’s has some safety protocols in place,” JARVIS warns her and before she can do anything a bunch of self manned Iron Man suits fly up and situate themselves in every corner of the room.

“ _ Honestly, Tony,”  _ she mutters, eyeing the red and gold suits in exasperation.  

“They’re for your own protection, Miss,” JARVIS replies, making her jump. She forgets sometimes that JARVIS is everywhere and she really hates it when the computer replies to her when she wasn’t look for a response.

“Of course they are,” Darcy rolls her eyes. “Even if they aren’t necessary,” she mumbles under her breath, hoping JARVIS wouldn’t pick up on it; or respond when he inevitably did.

Darcy makes her way over to the smaller room within the room - she refuses to call it the Hulk Cage now that someone is actually  _ living  _ in it - and pauses in front of it. One of the walls is completely glass, allowing her to see directly into the room, and for Bucky to see directly out of it.

When she glances back inside she notices that he’s still staring at her - and hadn’t moved at all from where he’d been standing when she’d entered the room. And if he’s anything like Steve, then he’s probably heard every word she’s said and every step she’s taken with his freakishly good hearing.

She wonders briefly if all his senses have been heightened - wonders if Steve’s have been as well, and makes a mental reminder to ask him. She considers asking Bucky but doesn’t think that’s the best first impression she can make - or second impression really.

She supposes as far as first impressions go, neither one of them has gotten off to a good start. He did try to strangle her after all, and she did shoot him with a nerf gun.

She doesn’t realise she’s staring at him in complete silence until he shifts a little under her gaze, shaking her out of her musings. She’s ready to say something when he speaks first.

“Steve says I need to apologise,” he speaks slowly, his voice gruff, as if he’s not quite sure of his words. “For trying to kill you,” he correctly guesses from the confusion on Darcy’s face.

“Oh,” she says, eyes widening. This certainly hadn’t been what she was expecting. “It was more my fault,” she waves him off and Bucky doesn’t look like he was going argue with her, like he thinks it was her fault too.

And, ok, yeah maybe he had a point.

Darcy’s lips twitch as she tries not to smile. Bucky didn’t miss the reaction, his eyes flicking down to her mouth and back up again suspiciously. “I always thought you were a puppy,” she blurts, all of her professionalism flying out the window. She knows Tony and Steve and everyone else will probably watch this at some point and she subconsciously glares at Bucky as she imagines them laughing at her.

“Are you disappointed that I’m not a puppy?” Bucky asks, sounding a little confused. As though it has been a while since he’s spoken so many words all at once, like he wasn’t sure of what he was saying or whether he should be saying anything at all.

“What? Oh, sorry,” she apologises quickly, realising she’d been basically trying to burn a hole through him. “I was thinking about something else,” she admits. “I’m not much of a dog person anyway,” she waves him off, taking a couple of steps forward before pausing.

She pulls a bag of candy from under her sweater and pulled it open. “I’m glad I didn’t lose this in the vents,” she points above at the roof. “Would you like some? I googled you, and wikipedia said you had - have? - a sweet tooth,” she babbles.

Bucky doesn’t respond. Not that she minds, Darcy can talk enough for the both of them.

“Is there anything you wanna try? I can probably sneak you some snacks before Tony and Steve figure out I’ve found out where they’re keeping you.”

Bucky simply blinks back at her.

Darcy remains unphased.

“How long do you think they’re going to make you live in there?” she asks, eyes lighting up when he merely shrugs at her. She hadn’t been expecting much of a response.  

“Sounds shit,” she furrows her brow. “I’ll bring you some pillows, and maybe some books. Ohhh, I bet I can sneak in a StarkPad,” she continues, not really paying much attention to Bucky anymore as she planned. “Tony might take it away when he finds out you have one though, which will totally suck, dude, those things are great. But I’m still gonna bring you some stuff to make this place less sad. Maybe even a shaving kit so you’re less hobo-like. That way people won’t think you’re a homeless person who broke in when they come to visit you.”

“Mr. Stark won’t be very happy with you if you come back, Miss Lewis,” JARVIS interrupts before Bucky even has a chance to react. “Neither will Captain Rogers. They have asked you to stay away,” JARVIS reminds her, voice reprimanding - for a robot anyway.

“Well you can tell Captain Rogers and Mr. Stark that they can shove-”

She’s cut off by an alarm sounding loudly around the room. The sudden sound had caused her to jump in surprise and Bucky had leapt forwards, hands poised to attempt to break through the glass in an effort to do what, she wasn’t sure. Maybe to escape.

“Fucking dammit,” Darcy curses, hand held up to her chest as she glares up into free space. “Not again. JARVIS do I have to go to a panic room?” she quizzes, wondering what was going on outside this time.

“No Miss Lewis, you should be fine in here,” came the robotic voice. 

“Thanks, J-Man,” she blows him a kiss and then turns back to Bucky. “Can you believe the nerve of these guys?” she snorts rhetorically, rolling her eyes at Bucky who simply stares back at her uncomprehendingly. “There’s an attack on the building at least once a month. And each time the bad guys just get dumber and dumber.” Darcy clears her throat. “So anyway, since we didn’t really get off to the best of starts. My name’s Darcy, I’m the unofficial Ruler Of The Labs and Secret Scientist Herder.”

Bucky doesn’t respond.  

“But between you and me,” she lowers her voice even though she knows there’s no one around to really hear her. “Tony pays me the big bucks to basically just feed and water Janie, Bruce and himself. Sometimes though, when I’m bored and The Heroes are desperate, Tony lets me hack into government agencies to stop the world from ending. I mean, you should have seen what the last alien invasion did to New York. The black suits were ready to level the city, sent a missile and everything. Honestly,” she shakes her head. “Men and their toys.”

She continues to babble on, munching on the bag of candy in her hand. “Are you sure you don’t want any?” she offers Bucky again.

He still doesn’t say anything.

Darcy sits down on the floor in front of Bucky’s glass wall and continues to chatter away, not really caring that he wasn’t saying anything at all, she could talk enough for the both of them. 


	2. making friends is easy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She still remembers the thunderous look on Bucky’s face the day she walked through the door with a bruise covering half her face and her wrist firmly wrapped in a splint.
> 
> (It probably shouldn’t have stirred the emotions it did inside her, but sue her, she’s a warm blooded human and he looked hot.)
> 
> He’d looked ready to break out of the cage and go on a murder spree until she calmed him down and told him what had happened. She hadn’t heard him laugh like that before and it more than made up for the throbbing pain in her cheeks as her own face split into a smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think!!!

Bucky is minding his own business, trying to unclutter all the cluttered memories his brain has managed to dig up, when the vents open up again. 

He freezes in place for a nanosecond, glancing around his surroundings for a weapon and an escape route - even though he knows there’s no way out - before turning back to try and gauge the threat.

The thought that Hydra has found him again makes his blood run cold for a moment before an eco bag is thrown haphazardly into the room followed by a pair of short, definitely  _ not  _ Hydra-like legs.

And then Darcy Lewis is standing in front of him again.

It had been a few days since her last visit and he hadn’t thought he’d see her again, even as she’d babbled about being back.

“Hey, dude,” she waves at him happily, completely ignoring the glare he was sending her way. He couldn’t believe her lack of instinct for self-preservation.

There’s a brief flash of a memory where he’s yelling at someone to “ _ aw _ ,  _ quit gettin’ into fights, Stevie. I’m not gunna be around to save your ass every time.” _

But then he blinks it away, storing it to analyse once he was alone again. Darcy may not be a physical threat, but Bucky’s not stupid. There are other ways to be dangerous; especially when you look like  _ that. _

The first day he’d met her and shoved her against the wall, the first thing he’d noticed was that she was  _ gorgeous _ . She’d shaken loose a memory of dancing and girls with red lips and victory rolls as he’d held his arm against her throat, hard enough to hold her in place but not enough to hurt. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t hurt her.

Even Sam and Steve had been a little shocked as they’d moved down the hall and away from the pretty dame who, while unarmed and clearly untrained, was dangerous all the same.

And here she was again. Standing in front of him shaking a bag of what, Bucky didn’t know.

He narrows his eyes at her, watching the bag swing back and forth and trying to burn through it. Her lips are moving but all Bucky cares about is what’s in the bag and whether it’s a threat.

“I tried to hack my way into the server,” she was saying once he manages to pay attention to her words. “But Tony’s good,” she admits grudgingly, “so it’s taking me a little longer to give myself clearance. And then Tony went on a mini science bender - between you and I, he’s building you an arm - so I had to literally cut power to his lab to make him leave it. Pepper said I could so no matter how mad Tony was, he couldn’t get me into trouble.”

Bucky was finding it difficult to figure out her angle.

“If he’d let me help with some of the mechanics, maybe I would’ve let him keep playing but he was being selfish. He’s been pouty ever since you got here, and then I find out that he’s building you an arm and won’t even let me help?” She continues to rant, kneeling down and pulling things out of the bag in quick succession. “You know he made me promise not to tell Steve about it? As if he didn’t run to tell him himself as soon as he left the lab.”

Bucky blinks back at her. He really doesn’t know how to respond to that; he doesn’t even know if he’s  _ supposed  _ to respond.

“So, I wasn’t sure what you like,” she continues, completely unphased at his lack of responses. “And I ended up just bringing a bunch of my favourites. I gotta tell you, Buckster, I’m not sure I can forgive you if you don’t at least like some of these. The 21st Century may be a crapshot in some ways, but the food is definitely not one of them.”

She holds up a bag of candy similar to what she had been munching on a couple of days ago. He feels his stomach gurgle a little as curiosity folds over him. It had been a while since he’s actually wanted to try something.

Food had always been what the handlers had given him. And even then it had always been just enough to keep him sustained but not enough for him to enjoy. And definitely never anything that tasted or smelt very nice.

She rips the package open and pulls out a fluffy white, cloud like candy that she shoves in her mouth and them promptly moans around. Bucky tries to ignore the sounds she’s making and instead tilts his head to try and peer into the bag.

“Want some?” she walks closer until she’s standing directly in front of him, separated only by the thick, reinforced, Stark Industries Special plane of glass.  

Bucky feels the edges of his lips twitch as she stares down at her while she continues to shovel small clouds of candy into her mouth.

“You sure those’re for me?” he quirks a brow as she shrugs and continues to chew.

“Thought we could share,” she responds, shooting him a wide smile.

“And how are we s’posed to do that?” he taps the glass between them, making sure to use his flesh arm and not the metal one. Just because he didn’t know what she was here, didn’t mean he wanted to scare her away.

“Just cos I couldn’t hack my way through -  _ yet,”  _ she added, “doesn’t mean I don’t have other tricks up my sleeve. JARVIS?” she looks up at the ceiling. “Think you could do me a teeny tiny favour?”

“Depends on the favour, Miss Lewis,” the AI droned. Bucky thinks he sounds a little dubious, but maybe that was just him projecting how he felt about this whole thing.

“Think you could let me in?” she asks sweetly, a saccharine smile splitting red lips that were now dusted white from the candy she was still eating.

“Don’t think that is a good idea, Miss,” JARVIS replies. Her lips turn down in a pout as she begins to frown. But before she has a chance to argue, there’s a slight hissing sound and the solid plane of glass in front of him starts to split. “But perhaps this will be of assistance?”

Darcy continues to frown a little while longer before she shrugs and her smile is back again. “It’ll do for now,” she concedes, placing the bag of candy on the slab of glass that was now acting as a mini table between them. “But don’t think I won’t keep trying.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Miss Lewis,” JARVIS quips back, sounding far too human than a machine has any right to.

She leaves the bag of candy and turns back to the eco bag she’s dropped beside her and picks it back up. “No offense, dude,” she tells him as she pulls out a fluffy purple cushion. Bucky couldn’t hide his surprise no matter how hard he tried. “But this place looks  _ suuuuper  _ depressing. And, I mean, I get it. Hydra Spysassins don’t have time for comfort blah blah blah, but this is Stark Tower and the 21st century. Comfort is a human right, dammit.”

She thrusts the cushion through the small window and Bucky just has enough time to move the bag of candy away so it’s doesn’t spill all over his feet.

“It’s super comfortable,” she tells him. “One of my favourites so you better look after it. Once you’re out of this…” she pauses for a second and for the first time since he’d first seen her, Bucky notices the flicker of doubt that crosses her face before it’s gone just as quickly. “I’ll be real with you, Sarge, this place is like a cage,” she shrugs apologetically. “Anyway,” she grins again. “Once you’re out, I’m gonna want it back so keep it safe.”

He’s not quite sure what to say to that so he keeps quiet while she continues to pull things out of the bag.

“You don’t say much do ya?” she asks, straightening back up and facing him, holding a neatly folded cotton shirt.

“Don’t got much to say, these days,” he responds automatically, a little bit of his old Brooklyn drawl slipping through.

Darcy’s eyes light up at the words. “Everyone’s got something to say,” she states. “Just gotta figure out what it is.”

He goes back to responding with shrugs and grunts and she deflates a little before shaking it off. “So, I noticed you didn’t have anything to change into when I was here last and really, I’m going to have to have a chat with Cap because he really should know better. I stole some of his clothes as revenge. You guys look like you’re the same size. But I gotta warn you, someone introduced him to muscle tees and good old Steven can never, for the life of him, find the right size.”

Bucky snorts again. “Sounds like Stevie.”

Darcy’s eyes light up again at his answer. “Try this on,” she thrusts the shirt at him, and he grabs at it automatically, the fingers on his metal arm sliding against hers for a moment before he rips himself away from her. She doesn’t seem to notice, smiling up at him as she rocks back and forth on her feet.

He waits for her to turn away, or shut her eyes, give him some semblance of privacy but when she doesn’t he feels a wave of approval run through him.  _ Good, _ he thinks,  _ never turn your back on the enemy. _

He doesn’t feel comfortable turning his own back to her yet either, so he slips his current shirt over his head, leaving his chest bare for a few seconds before pulling the shirt she handed him on over his head.

When he looks back at her he catches the way her eyes are fixed on his metal arm. He clenches his fist in response, the metal plates shifting in place and snapping her out of the trance.

“Sorry,” she apologises, her cheeks colouring a delicate pink.

“‘S ok,” he shrugs, his face clouding over a little. “‘M sorry if it makes you uncomfortable.”

She frowns at that. “It doesn’t. I think it’s cool,” she admits. “Can you imagine the people we can help if we use the mechanics to develop prosthetics?” she lights up. “At least some good might come out of Hydra.”

Again, Bucky’s not sure what to say to that, so he stays quiet.

“Here.” This time she hands him the eco bag itself. “There’s more stuff in there. I brought the whole Harry Potter series for you as an introduction to pop culture. Read them, learn them, love them. They’re my favourite books.”

He watches her look back at him expectantly before he reaches in and pulls out a book, quirking a brow at her in question.

“Not that one,” she scolds. “I’ve labeled them for you from books one through seven.”

He looks down then, noticing the bookmark with the number ‘3’ written on it and places the book back into the bag, rummaging around until he finds the one with the number ‘1’. He holds it out to her.

Darcy nods at him happily.

-

She doesn’t know how it happened, but within a few weeks she finds herself happily sitting around with Bucky chattering away about the day’s events and teaching him about pop culture.

Well, ok, that’s a lie. She knows how it happened. It happened the same way a lot of her friendships seemed to form these days - with her lack of filter and dubious definition of personal space.

Still, she hadn’t expected him to give in to her so easily. Even Steve had been harder to crack. But she wasn’t complaining.

She’d even managed to hack Tony’s systems and now had free reign of the Hulk Space. But JARVIS was still preventing her from getting inside the actual cage.

(She has a feeling that was more Bucky than anything though - she’d heard Steve talking about how he wouldn’t let anyone inside yet. And as dubious as Darcy’s definition of personal space was, some things she knew not to push.)

Sometimes, when she came to see him, she still crawled through the vents, partly because usually there were guards outside the door and partly because she’d kinda grown fond of the sneaking around.

Mostly though, she kinda did it for the small smile she’d see on Bucky’s face when she jumps down and he realises it’s her.

She has a feeling Nat knows what she’s been up to, and by extension, Clint probably does too. They’ve both been bullying her into taking up more training with them in the gym and when she’d declined, they’d started staging surprise attacks on her while she was at work or in her apartment.

She still remembers the thunderous look on Bucky’s face the day she walked through the door with a bruise covering half her face and her wrist firmly wrapped in a splint.

(It probably shouldn’t have stirred the emotions it did inside her, but sue her, she’s a warm blooded human and he looked  _ hot.) _

He’d looked ready to break out of the cage and go on a murder spree until she calmed him down and told him what had happened. She hadn’t heard him laugh like that before and it more than made up for the throbbing pain in her cheeks as her own face split into a smile.

Too tired to crawl through the vents, she used the door today, ignoring the way the guards had looked at her suspiciously as she swiped her card. It had opened up for her with a quiet buzz and Darcy had marched her way over to stand in front of Bucky.

“Hiya, Doll,” he drawls as she approaches. His Brooklyn accent has been coming out more and more recently, not that Darcy was complaining. She loved it. “You’re lookin’ like you’ve seen better days,” he spoke, the last few letters of the word better blending together and ringing through the room as ‘betta’. She wonders if maybe he does it on purpose sometimes, as though it helps remind him of who he can be and not what they made him into.

“That’s because I have, Sarge,” she glares, Bucky’s lips twist in amusement. He’s told her before, when he was having one of his better days, that he thinks she looks like an angry kitten when she’s mad.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” He asks her fondly, and Darcy feels a little bit of the resentment she’d marched in with melt away. He only calls her that when he’s having a particularly good day and no matter what her mood may have been like before, the lightness she could see around his eyes always made her feel a little better.

But today, even that wasn’t enough to help her calm down completely.

“Tony locked me out of the labs so it was just him and Janie inside and they were being childish and doing all the things I never let them do. And for good reason!” She rants. “They set off a stupid fucking explosion in  _ my  _ half of the fucking lab and my laptop was the victim! I lost all my mother fucking data from the last month!” She curses repeatedly, Bucky’s eyes darkening the more she swore.  _ Good,  _ she thinks.  _ Those two assholes deserve the Murder Glare.  _ She’ll take a picture of him and attach it to every email and text she ever sends them until they’re begging for her forgiveness.

“Can Stark do somethin’ ‘bout the data you lost?” He tries to come up with a solution. “Your computer is StarkTech, isn’t it?”

“It’s also now just a pile of broken pieces of plastic,” she grumbles, the fight suddenly leaving her. “I told them both any work that was lost is theirs to find again. I’m not doing any of that shit again, dude. See these fingers?” she wriggles them in a wave. “They were sore and wonky for  _ weeks _ after I compiled all those reports. Bruce said I was on my way to early arthritis when he finally convinced me to let him take a look.”

He’d tricked her, actually, by asking her to be his guinea pig for a new ultrasound/x-ray Stark Industries had designed. But that was neither here nor there.

“Can’t be havin’ that, can we?” The corners of his lips twitch upwards and Darcy narrows her eyes.

“You think it’s funny,” she accuses him.

“I’ve been used as a weapon of war for seventy odd years. I get my laughs where I can,” he bats his eyes at her innocently, and honestly, Darcy had thought Steve was a little shit but Bucky Barnes was giving him a run for his money.

She finally sees why they were best friends and wonders briefly who was the worse influence. The answer comes to her almost as quickly as the question did: Steve.

He’d taken to the 21st century like a mosquito to blood. And that’s the metaphor she’ll use until they're digging her grave. Steve was a  _ parasite  _ when he wanted to be, especially when he was put into a room with Tony and there wasn’t any recent alien invasions to put out.

Turns out superheroes turn into children when they’re bored. Especially superheroes the rest of the world thinks are Mature Mark’s.

If it wasn’t for all the NDA’s Darcy had been forced to sign after being handed her contract, she’d have exposed them all by now. But she’d have to settle for in-house bullying only. Which is a shame. She thinks twitter would absolutely  _ love  _ seeing Captain America wearing Iron Man underwear.

(Thank you, JARVIS).

“You’re gonna use that line as long as you can, huh?” She crosses her arms, feeling strangely satisfied when his eyes flickered to her chest momentarily.  _ Fuck yeah, not even the former Winter Soldier could resist.  _ She smirks at him knowing he knows he’s been caught.

He stares right back at her, not a single bit of embarrassment or remorse on his face as his lips split into a smirk to mirror hers. “You betcha.”

Darcy rolls her eyes.

“Miss Lewis,” JARVIS interrupts, his voice sounding throughout the room. Both Darcy and Bucky glance up at the ceiling as he speaks. “Sir is on his way down here with Captain Rogers.”

“Aw, c’mon!” She grumbles. “He refuses to leave the lab when I literally beg him to, but when he’s more than willing to ruin all my plans for the day!”

“Plans?” Bucky quirks a brow at her curiously.

“I had Big Things for us to do today, Bucky,” she tells him ominously before reaching into the bag that was hanging off her shoulder and pulling out a StarkPad. “It’s the latest model,” she tells him. “It does this really neat thing where it splits and becomes a bigger screen and I finally finagled my way into Tony’s Netflix account. His password was totally Captain America Sucks, with an ‘x’, bee-tee-dubs. I was gonna set you up with an introduction to modern cinema. Superheroes have The Worst timing.”

She walks over to Bucky and hands him the StarkPad through the little window JARVIS always opened up for her when she came in. Bucky had reprimanded her for it a number of times because it wasn’t safe for him to have even the slightest chance of escaping if the soldier came for a visit, but eventually he’d given up.

As usual her hand brushes against his fingers as she hands him today’s gift.

“Same story as always, JARVIS?” she quizzes him just to make sure.

“Yes, Miss Lewis. WHen Sir asks I will tell him you sent it down with Dum-E and U,” he recites back to her dutifully.

“Thanks, J,” she grins up at the ceiling. “Tony’s gonna be so pissed when he finds out you like me more than him.”

JARVIS doesn’t reply as he slides open a vent above her head.

-

_ “No! Not without you!” he yells as he grasps onto the railing in front of him. _

_ There’s a man on the other side with a shield telling him to run. But he can’t - he  _ won’t  _ \- leave him behind. _

_ Not again. _

_ He watches the man glance around, slide his shield onto his back, and take a few steps away from the railing. Bucky’s eyes widen in surprise, then dread. He knows what the man’s about to do and he doesn’t think he’s gonna make it. _

‘Steve, no!’  _ the words get caught in his throat as he watches his friend -  _ he was his friend - _ take a running start a leap across the void, his hand reaching out for Bucky to grab and Bucky reaching back. _

_ And then he was falling, like Bucky had known he would. Except… _ Steve  _ wasn’t falling,  _ he  _ was. _

_ It was cold. _

_ He was surrounded by snow, he realised. _

_ There had been a train -  _ where was the train? -  _ and a rail that couldn’t hold his weight. _

_ And Steve. _

_ Steve who’d been trying to grab him before he fell. Because he had. He’d fallen. And fallen and fallen. _

_ And then there had been  _ pain.

_ He’d screamed. He remembers screaming. For Steve. For help. For someone. _

_ And then:  _ Soldat.

Bucky woke with a start, his hair was sticking to his forehead with sweat and there was someone in the room with him, shushing him and trying to call out his name.

He grabs hold of whoever it is that has almost wrapped themselves around him and throws them to the floor with as much of his strength as he can gather. And then he’s standing poised to attack, a Winter Soldier snarl curling his lips as he looks around for a weapon. He finds nothing. So he quickly turns to catalogue the threat, analyse the enemy and find their weakness.

“Ugh, dude, you’re strong.”

It’s Darcy.

Darcy is standing in front of him, arms loose and guard completely down.

Darcy was the one who’d wrapped herself around him.

Darcy was the one he’d thrown bodily across the room. He feels his lungs collapse at how close he’d come to really hurting her. Even though she stood in front of him unharmed, looking a little annoyed.

“Nat will have an absolute fit if she ever sees this,” she muses, completely unaware of the turmoil rippling through Bucky. “I’ve been ditching lessons and she’s gonna totally use this as collateral if she ever sees it. JARVIS please delete the footage,” she practically begs the computer before following it up with a rushed: “wait, no, don’t delete it yet. Send it to me first. I _totally_ _nailed_ that tuck and roll. I bet I look awesome.”

Bucky continues to stare at her, shock colouring his expression as it finally snaps into place that Darcy was  _ here. _

_ Inside. _

“You’re looking a little green there, dude,” she tells him warily. “I know this is the Hulk Cage and all but, you doing ok? You’re not gonna hurl on me or anything are you? Cos I gotta warn you, I’ll hurl right back. I’m not ashamed to admit that.”

“How did you get in?” He grits out, clenching and unclenching his fists to try and release some of the tension rolling through his body.

“Uh, I asked JARVIS?” She poses it as a question.

“Actually, Sergeant Barnes,” JARVIS interrupts, making them both jump. Well, Darcy jumped, Bucky merely stiffened in place. “Miss Lewis hacked my system and let herself in.”

“Ok! In my defence, you were both being silly!” She crosses her arms across her chest. Bucky wills his eyes to stay on her face. “And you’re lucky I was here,” she glares at him, a sudden fire burning in her eyes. “JARVIS was this close,” she holds her fingers the tiniest bit apart from each other, “to calling Steve for you. Did you want him to Mother Hen you for the next two weeks because you had a nightmare? He’d never leave your side. And I have plans, dammit! We haven’t even watched any of the Harry Potter films yet!”

Bucky can’t help it. He cracks a little smile at that. “Darcy, you could’ve been hurt,” he says, more seriously.  _ I could have hurt you,  _ he means.

Darcy rolls her eyes and skips towards him. “I would’ve tased you,” she pulls the weapon out from under her shirt and shoes it to him. He hadn’t even realised she was carrying it. “I’m not an idiot, I know you can totally snap me in two if you wanted to. But dude, I tased Thor because he looked big and dangerous, I’ll do it to you too. I’ve tased Clint for less. I’ll probably even enjoy it,” she admits.

“You can’t be in here,” he tries to tell her again.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s not safe, The Soldier can come out at any point, blah blah blah,” she waved him off, moving to jump onto his bed and patting the mattress beside her. “I told you, I’ll tase you. Also, JARVIS will definitely sic Tony’s toys on you to protect me. They’re standing on standby.” She waves around the room, gesturing at the wall of red and gold that JARVIS had stationed where Darcy normally stood when she came to see Bucky.

“Darce,” he sighs, still trying to come to terms with what had happened and the memories that had been knocked loose while he slept.

“Bucky,” she calls to him softly. “Come sit.”

And he does as she asks, stiffly making his way over towards his bed. He’s still trying to adjust to how soft it is, and how every time he goes to sleep now he doesn’t have to worry about being cold. He makes sure to leave enough space between them that so she’ll have time to draw her taser if she needs to before he can try and hurt her again. He’d much prefer she keeps it aimed at him, but if he can’t make her leave his cell he doubts he’ll be able to talk her into anything.

He tries anyway. “You shouldn’t be in here, doll,” he tells her.

“I’m not leaving now that I’ve finally broken in. That’s like asking a criminal not to commit the one crime they’ve been working towards their whole life.” When he looks at her strangely she continues. “I’m adding the Ocean's Trilogy to our Must Watch List. Oh, maybe we can invite Steve. But only if he behaves.” 

“At least keep your taser out,” he urges her, ignoring her little tangent.

“No.”

“Darcy,” he warns her.

“' _Darcy'_ ,” she mocks him.

“No offense, Bucky-”

“Sounds like I’m ‘bout to be offended,” he cuts her off, feeling himself loosen a little at her glare.

“ _ No offense, Bucky,  _ but you’re not as scary as you think you are. Especially not since you got rid of the beard and got a trim,” she waves at his face. “You’re actually kinda pretty.”

“Only kinda?” he teases, eventually giving up. “Stevie’s mum used to joke that she’d never needed to have a daughter. I used to go over there often enough, and she always told me I was pretty enough to give a run for any of the dames that came knocking.”

Darcy snorts. “If only she could see her son now. He’s the real pretty boy,” she fans at her face dramatically. “I walked in on him when he was changing once and wow would I salute to that.”

“I don’t got anything to say to that, doll,” he admits. Bucky isn’t one to be easily surprised these days, but Darcy somehow still manages to shock him at times.

“No one ever does,” she says mildly as she reaches over and pats him on the thigh before moving away once more, careful to keep the distance between them the same. He wonders if she’s doing it on purpose and immediately decides that she is. Darcy is a lot of things, but stupid is not one of them.

He feels another little knot inside him unravel at how she manages to both treat him like a normal person and still respect the boundaries he’s placed between them -  _ some of them anyway, _ he thinks wryly.

“So, wanna watch a movie?” She holds up the StarkPad she’d smuggled in for him with a giant smile on her face and Bucky doesn’t have the heart to say anything but yes.

-

The day Steve and Tony find out she’s been creeping in to see Bucky, was decidedly not a good one.

Darcy had snuck down to see Bucky after Jane had declared the labs closed for the next few days while Thor was in town, and Darcy hadn’t argued with her. Tony and Bruce were still puttering away in their own labs but she’d decided that they could fend for themselves for a day, especially since she and Bucky were finally about to watch  _ The Empire Strikes Back _ . She was buzzing with excitement to see his reaction at the big Vader reveal.

When she’d made Steve watch the films with her, he’d looked personally betrayed at the revelation and everyone had been forced to listen to him rant about it for days afterwards.

It was almost like watching the films all over again.

“Alright, Bucky,” she rubs her hands together, the StarkPad set between their respective beanbags. Over time she’d started sneaking more and more of her favourite things into Bucky’s space, turning it more into a room than a prison cell. She was surprised no one had questioned anything yet. “Are you ready to watch this masterpiece?”

“I gotta say, I feel like you’re setting me up here, Doll,” Bucky tells her with a suspicious frown on his face.

“Have I let you down yet?” Darcy demands from him, handing him a bag of caramel popcorn she’d stolen from Tony’s lab.

“You made me sit through four movies about vampires that sparkle in sunlight,” he points out accusingly.

“Don’t talk shit about Twilight if you know what’s good for you,” she narrows her eyes at him threateningly. “Those movies should’ve won Academy Awards.”

Bucky holds his hands up in surrender, a small smile on his lips.

He doesn’t get much of a chance to respond though as the panic alarms started ringing around the room.

She stands up quickly, Bucky already on his feet watching the door with an anxious frown on his face.

“JARVIS?” Darcy asks the ceiling carefully. No response comes and Bucky glances back at her with wide, worried eyes. He’s been relaxing more and more around her, his face becoming easier to read.

“Stay behind me. And keep your taser ready,” he warns her, donning a protective stance in front of her and hiding her from the line of sight of whoever walks through the doors next.

“It’s probably just Tony blowing something up,” she tries to reassure him, though she doesn’t sound like she’s very sure about that. “Maybe I should go and check on him.”

She tries to take a few steps around Bucky to make her way out of the room, but he blocks all her attempts. “Stay behind me,” he tells her again, shooting one last warning glance at her just before the doors start to open.

“ _ Soldat _ ,” came a silky, accented voice, making Bucky freeze up in front of her. “It took me a while to find you. But I have learnt to be a patient man.”

“Who are you?” Bucky demands, voice cold. “We’ve never met.”

Darcy feels a chill run down her spine at his tone. There was no feeling in it at all and she’d never heard him sound like that before, not even the first couple of times she’d met him, when he’d looked more like the Winter Soldier than his current self.

“My name is Helmut Zemo,” the man says. Darcy still hasn’t managed to get a look at him, staying firmly hidden behind Bucky like he’d asked her to. “You are right, we have not met before,” he confirms when Bucky remains silently frozen between them. “And we may never have, had it not been for your friends.” 

“Hydra? We aren’t friends,” Bucky says sharply, metal arm flexing beside him.

“No,” Zemo agrees, and Darcy imagines him nodding his head. “But they are not the friends I am referring to,” he continues. “It is a shame we find ourselves in this place,” he says calmly. “But it must be done.” Darcy thinks he sounds falsely regretful. “Your friends took everything from me, and now you will take whatever you can from them, for me.”

“Yeah?” Bucky drones back at him, and if she listens carefully Darcy can almost hear the cocky lilt to his words. “And why would I be doing that?”

Zemo shuffles around a little bit and she feels a little bit of dread settle in her stomach at the slight intake of breath she hears Bucky take.

“No,” he says, his words sound angry - furious, even. “No.”

“I do apologise,  _ Soldat _ .” Darcy notes that he doesn’t sound very apologetic at all. She thinks he sounds sadistic. “But they took everything from me,” he repeats his earlier sentiments. “And I will have my revenge, and you will do it for me. It took me too long to find The Red Book and get my hands on it for me to stop now.”

_ The Red Book. _

Darcy knew what that was. She’d read about it when she’d been doing her Winter Soldier research and she knew that if this man had it with him, she, and everyone else in the tower, were in danger.

“JARVIS?” Bucky calls out desperately.

“The computer cannot help you now,  _ Soldat,”  _ he says calmly. “He is currently indisposed.”

And then he starts to recite words in a foreign language that Darcy knows is Russian from hearing Nat curse around the tower, but she has no idea what any of them mean, just that they are being used as a trigger.

“No!” Bucky flinches in front of her as more and more words are said.

He turns to face her and she’s able to get her first glance at the man standing outside the glass wall. He doesn’t look very surprised that Darcy is there and she thinks that he’s maybe known of her presence from the start.

“Darcy,” Bucky calls her name desperately, pulling her eyes back to his face. She’s never seen him look so tortured before. Not even that time he’d woken from a nightmare the first time she’d snuck into this room. “You gotta get out of here,” he begs her. “You have to  _ leave, d _ o you understand? _ ” _

Darcy nods at him. “But will you be ok?” she asks him and watches as a quick wave of exasperation temporarily washes over his face.

“Darce, you’re the one in danger,” he tells her. “You have to run. Use your taser if you can, but don’t do anything stupid. Don’t try to be a hero,” he adds.

“Trust me, I’m not above running,” she tells him, ignoring the dubious look on his face just as Zemo finishes the last word and Bucky freezes in front of her.

A cold, detached look passes over his face as he looks at her without really seeing her. 

“ _ Soldat,”  _ Zemo calls for his attention and Bucky turns slowly to face him, back straight and body standing as still as a soldier. “Are you ready to comply?” he asks.

“Ready to comply,” Bucky confirms robotically.

“Good. Kill her,” he smirks, eyes meeting Darcy’s as he gives the order.

He turns to look back at Darcy, no recognition in his eyes as he locks his gaze on her.

Darcy’s hands shake beside her as he begins to walk towards him, murder strut on full display and even scarier in person than on video.

“Uh, hey there, Sarge?” she speaks nervously. “You good? It’s me Darcy. We’re friends, remember?” she swallows and takes a single step back. Bucky freezes in place as she moves, causing her to do the same. She tries to appear as non-threatening as possible as she blinks back at him while he watches her. “Listen, dude, I know I said I’d run, but you’re kinda blocking my exist,” she continues, doing the one thing she always does when she’s nervous or excited -  she babbles. “And to be honest, Homicidal Foreign Dude is holding a gun out there,” he waves behind him. “So I’m not sure I’ll be any safer around him, anyway.”

He tilts his head at her a little, eyes trailing over her. She thinks he’s trying to analyse her for a threat and does her best to keep her posture open. When he doesn’t immediately attack her, she thinks she’s doing a pretty good job so she continues talking.

“I gotta say though, The Avengers really need to work on their response time and Tony needs to work on JARVIS’ internal coding because, no offense,” she leans around Bucky and scowls at Zemo and speaks directly to him now, “but you don’t seem like the smartest tool in the shed to be able to hack in so easily - especially since you chose to attack inside the tower where there are literally thousands of shield agents walking around, and _ literal _ superheroes and aliens living just a few floors up.” 

“I told you to kill her,  _ Soldat _ ,” Zemo says, sounding impatient. “We have more important people to go after.”

“I’m plenty important, thank you very much!” she glares at him, crossing her arms across her chest and forgetting for a moment that her life was in danger.

But Bucky still didn’t attack her.

There was a sudden noise behind Zemo and all three of them turn to watch the door slide open once more as Tony and Steve enter the room in full getup -  _ finally. _

The commotion causes Bucky to jump back into action as he launches himself at Darcy. She thinks for a moment that she’s done for, that she’s going to die and she wasn’t even going to get to see Bucky’s reaction to the Darth Vader reveal, so she squeezes her eyes shut and waits.

But nothing happens. Instead someone calls her name.

“Darcy! What the hell?” Tony calls out for her, the face plate moving aside on his Iron Man suit as he speaks.

She peeks through her lashes, seeing nothing but a heavily muscled back for a moment.

It takes her a second to put together what was happening, but eventually she realises that Bucky is standing in front of her again;  _ protecting her. _

She notices that he’s holding her taser in his non-metal hand as he watches everyone else critically while making sure he was blocking their path towards her.

“Bucky?” Steve calls out to him, holding his hands out placatingly.

Darcy notices that Clint and Nat are holding Zemo down, preventing him from escaping. She wonders who unarmed him but immediately decides that she doesn’t care.

“Who the hell’s Bucky?”

Darcy watches Steve flinch and remembers that those were the exact words he spoke to him on the bridge after Shieldra was first revealed.

“Ok, Murderbot,” Tony cuts in, taking over for Steve who still has a pained look on his face. “How about you just let the girl go and then we can talk about getting you a better room since apparently my security for this place seems to be shit.” He sounds annoyed at himself.

“No,” Bucky says simply, widening his stance as though preparing for an attack.

“Hey,” Darcy reaches out for him carefully and rests a hand on his metal arm. Bucky looks down at her, frowning a little a little at where her hand was making contact with him. “It’s ok,” she says to him gently, ignoring the others. “They’re the good guys.”

He blinks at her for a few seconds before nodding and handing her back her taser. She slips it back into her pocket.

“Darcy, what’s going on? How did you get in there?” Steve asks her, finding his words once again.

“She’s been sneaking in to see him since he got here,” Nat answers for her, saving Darcy from an explanation for now.

“What?” Tony sounds livid. “And how long have you known this?”

“Since the beginning,” Natasha shrugs, hitting Zemo behind the head when he begins to squirm.

“We’ll talk about this later,” Steve scolds Nat, Tony nodding in agreement from beside him. Natasha just rolls her eyes. “C’mon, Darce, let’s get you to safety.”

“Uh, can’t I just stay here?” she asks, shuffling a little closer to Bucky - or, the Winter Soldier. She wasn’t sure who he was right now.

“No,” both Tony and Steve say at the same time.

Bucky shifts beside her at their tone to make sure he was still standing in front of her just enough to be protective.

“Aw, but we were about to watch The Empire Strikes Back,” she whines as Tony types into a keypad beside the glass wall. It splits enough to allow an opening for just one person to walk in or out.  

“Please don’t start this again,” Clint groans at the outraged look on Steve’s face.

“Darcy,” Natasha calls her name, ignoring the others and looking at her pointedly. “We all need to talk, and  _ he  _ needs to rest,” she nods towards Bucky.

“Fine,” Darcy looks up at him and sighs. “I’ll be back later, ok?” she reaches up and touches his cheek gently.

Bucky leans into her hand for a moment before stepping back and allowing Darcy to walk past him and through the opening in the glass wall. Tony places her in front of him as soon as she’s close enough and leads them all back out and over to an emergency elevator while Natasha and Clint take Zemo over to a holding cell.

“How the hell did you manage to make friends with the Winter Soldier?” Tony grumbles as they wait.

Darcy shrugs, a satisfied grin on her face. “I’m loveable.”

Steve snorts. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave a comment! 
> 
> The next chapter might be a little while as I have work full time + a uni application that I have to fill out within the next few days and it's taking longer than I thought it would...

**Author's Note:**

> please leave a comment below!


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